A prodigious talent who earned the 14-and-under girls\u2019 singles title at the prestigious Orange Bowl junior tournament in 2021, Jovic wasn\u2019t always destined to play professional tennis though in hindsight, she\u2019s pleased with the decision.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor a long time, it was [about] getting into a great school and having a good college career, getting a good education \u2026 that was the plan, and then things just kind of took a little bit of a turn,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Fluent in both Serbian and English, the right-hander\u2019s aggressive game has been inspired by major champions including Jannik Sinner, Monica Seles and Novak Djokovic.<\/p>\n
\u201cDjokovic was a big [inspiration] for me, so it\u2019s pretty cool to be playing a tournament that he\u2019s playing in,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The 10-time AO champion carved out time during his pursuit of a 25th major to speak with Jovic, she revealed after defeating Paolini.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was pretty incredible,\u201d she said. \u201cHe gave me some very attentive tips for my game and some thing[s] I can try to incorporate into this match that I just played.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Serbian great\u2019s advice to a player two decades his junior was to open up the court, not rush into shots and find some more width.<\/p>\n
\u201cI tried to do that, and it ended well, so I’m just going to try to keep listening to Novak.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Jovic makes regular trips to Serbia, visiting the cities of Belgrade and Leskovac, where she has family, and her admiration for Djokovic runs a little deeper than an average American.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou always think about those moments where you’re going to meet your idols a little bit, and I think sometimes for certain people it can be a little bit deflating if they are maybe not as nice or as open as you anticipated,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Fortunately, the former world No.1 did not disappoint. \u201cHe’s almost even kinder and even more attentive outside the cameras than what he’s portrayed.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was amazing \u2026 he’s so intelligent and smart and really wants to help the younger generation so I’m really grateful.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully I’ll speak with him more and listen to his advice.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A prodigious talent who earned the 14-and-under girls\u2019 singles title at the prestigious Orange Bowl junior tournament in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":430078,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-430077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=430077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/430078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=430077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=430077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=430077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}